MacBook Pro (Late 2008) Wireless Issues

Bobby & Carie wrote:
Regretfully, we don't have a full day to plan a trip to the nearest Apple store, pray that we can duplicate the problem on their network, and the hope the Apple gods smile upon us for a same day appointment with a Genius, book a hotel, and then drive home the next day. Sometimes Apple users aren't big city folks. But us poor ol' redneck folk will either see a fix from Apple, or plan a mini-vacation to an Apple store.

An Apple Store is a convenient way to do a cross-check and see if their in-store units are behaving the same as yours and to interact in person with someone.

But calling AppleCare and opening a ticket costs you no travel time and adds to their database of systems experiencing the issue, which is why I recommended that approach as well.

Apple generally doesn't acknowledge bugs that are being worked; the only time they acknowledge issues is when they release a software update that resolves them.

It's also unclear at this point where the problem lies; in a situation like yours where your connection has "moods" it's far more likely the actual issue is interference from other Wi-Fi routers or devices in the 2.4 GHz band such as cordless phones and microwave ovens - things Apple can't do anything about.

(BTW, all Nintendo did was issue silicone covers with wrist straps for their Wii controllers; they didn't "replace" anything.)

So in short, if you can't make it to an Apple Store, at least call AppleCare and open a trouble ticket regarding your concerns.

William, it may be about interference but it's the MBP's fault anyway. I have five wifi devices at home, all work nicely but the MBP, that has the "moods". If the problem is related to interference, it is about the MBP being useless at managing it.

G.

We all know that AppleCare is the channel to use to notify about issues. The problem is that, as you have seen, the issue is subtle and in most case is not replicable in the shops. Anybody who tried opening an AppleCare ticket got their laptop taken, airport replaced, just to have the problem again afterwards.

The only way to get Apple to understand this is real, is to bring one of their engineers in one of the environments where the problem takes place.

As you suggest, I would contact AppleCare just for the sake of it, but which computer will I use in the meantime? I have already spent $2,000 for the first MBP, shall I spend another $2,000 for a backup one, while leaving the first to Apple? And if they don't find anything, as it usually happens, I shall bring it back again and again and again?

The fact that all other PCs and wifi devices I have work nicely is a proof of the fact that it is not an environmental issue, nor a router one.

You say it's not hundreds of users, but I would not be so sure. There are several threads describing sometimes in different ways the same issue, for the latest and the previous generation of MBP.

Giacecco wrote:
We all know that AppleCare is the channel to use to notify about issues. The problem is that, as you have seen, the issue is subtle and in most case is not replicable in the shops. Anybody who tried opening an AppleCare ticket got their laptop taken, airport replaced, just to have the problem again afterwards.

To a certain degree that's also helpful as it helps Apple rule out whether it's a hardware issue with their systems or not. This is how Apple both finds out about true hardware issues as well as finds things ranging from bad chip runs by vendors, improper installation of AirPort cards at the factory, failure to connect or pinched antenna cables, etc.

Apple engineering will also occasionally "capture" a problematic user machine for their own diagnostic purposes to try and reproduce the issue in-house. Working with captured machines only to find no issues with them in-house is also a major data point that points toward either a router issue or a software problem.

Regardless, none if it can occur without going through AppleCare first.

The only way to get Apple to understand this is real, is to bring one of their engineers in one of the environments where the problem takes place.

Possible, but there are far too many variables involved to do that. I can't say that they won't do that, but even if they do it will be by contacting someone who has reported the problem to AppleCare.

Apple doesn't have "field service" techs per se, so I suspect highest priority would be given to someone experiencing the issue that happens to live in Cupertino. 😀

As you suggest, I would contact AppleCare just for the sake of it, but which computer will I use in the meantime? I have already spent $2,000 for the first MBP, shall I spend another $2,000 for a backup one, while leaving the first to Apple? And if they don't find anything, as it usually happens, I shall bring it back again and again and again?

In general Apple won't have you send it back in if the problem persists after a repair.

If your system needs to be captured for engineering, they may be nice enough to cross-ship you a new one.

The fact that all other PCs and wifi devices I have work nicely is a proof of the fact that it is not an environmental issue, nor a router one.

That simply is not true. The biggest fallacy people have is to say "these devices all work, the Mac is at fault" when in reality that is not a valid test.

The example I like to give is if there's a bug in the firmware where adding "3 + 2" returns 5 but adding "2 + 3" returns 6.

If Windows PCs and other devices always add "3 + 2" but the driver for the new MBP happens to add "2 + 3" and gets an incorrect answer from the router, it's not Apple's responsibility to work around that, it's the router manufacturer's responsibility to fix their issue.

You say it's not hundreds of users, but I would not be so sure. There are several threads describing sometimes in different ways the same issue, for the latest and the previous generation of MBP.

Just by scanning AD, I'd say the number of reports is well under 100.

Now please, don't for a minute believe I am trying to downplay the issue or how frustrating it is for you.

Rather I'm trying to point out that going through AppleCare is the only way this issue will get resolved.

Apple engineering is who has to diagnose and resolve the issue, and the information you provide to AppleCare is the only way they get the data to be able to do that.

William Kucharski wrote:
it's not Apple's responsibility to work around that, it's the router manufacturer's responsibility to fix >their issue.

If you read what I posted, you would have noted that I had a Belkin Router, when I took the two machines to the local Apple Store, they couldn't replicate the porblem in their store, on their router. Of course, they didn't take very much time to see if they could reproduce it.

They blamed it on Belking Router, so I bought the Airport Extreme. Guess what, the problem still exist. All that was accomplished was that Apple made another couple of hundred bucks, and I feel like I'm doing the testing on Apples problem.

BTW, I started with Apple Care. They couldn't believe I was having a problem with Airport.

One last point. Apples Site is the most convoluted of all of the sites that I visit daily. Try and find the 17" MacBook Pro, Apple Care Link. It is a real PIA to find.

Message was edited by: Lee Smith

I have discovered that there are definitely issues with the late 2008 MacBook Pro and some wireless networks.

I have at home the following wireless devices:
2 x PowerBook G4
1 x PowerMac G5
2 x MacBook Pro (late 2008)
1 x Nokia N95
1 x Belikin Wireless G Access Point
1 x Siemens Wireless Access Point

Until the arrival of the MacBook Pros the home network was working pretty much perfectly with all other devices.

Immediately out of the boxes both MacBook Pros exhibited exactly the same behaviour - i.e. - they would not connect to the internet wirelessly with the belkin (the signal strength was fine, it was the DHCP and IP address which were unable to assign and configure properly and no amount of manual assistance solved this). So I dug out the siemens router and eventually managed to gain some success - however - the reason for this - and later the reason for my eventual success in getting the MacBooks to play nice with the Belkin also, was through connecting each MacBook to the router via ethernet and attempting to log into their control panel. Just this simple step then allowed both MacBook Pros to surf the internet through both routers. Why?!

However, out in the wild the same problem has struck - the local cafe's wireless network (which was working fine with the old PowerBooks) also incurs the same problem with the new MacBook Pros. But obviously in these situations one cannot just plug directly into the router in an attempt to befriend it!

Apple. Please update your machines so that these incompatibility issues are eradicated.

has anyone gotten a straight answer on ether how to fix it or what there doing to get it fixed?

i have had the same problems, it takes way to long to connect to wireless and when i'm playing world of warcraft i have an extremely high latency and i have a Netgear N router.

i will most likely be calling apple sometime tomorrow about this issue, and there not going to like me.

If you know what the IP address is of your netgear router... open up Terminal and type "ping ipaddress"

I haven't experienced this slowdown lately, but it seems to come in waves. I'm usually ok for a week, bad for a week, ok for a week, etc....

When my wireless is bad I see extremely large response times when I ping my wireless router with my laptop. I'm just curious to see if you get the same sort of results.

this is what im getting:
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=15.023 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=2.965 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=3.812 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=5.367 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=6.598 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.943 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=3.274 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=7 ttl=64 time=3.519 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=8 ttl=64 time=4.000 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=9 ttl=64 time=3.387 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=10 ttl=64 time=3.393 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=4.853 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=12 ttl=64 time=3.480 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=3.116 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=0.918 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=3.636 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=3.354 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=64 time=4.229 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=18 ttl=64 time=3.028 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=19 ttl=64 time=22.624 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=20 ttl=64 time=0.911 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=64 time=3.655 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=3.658 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=23 ttl=64 time=3.706 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=24 ttl=64 time=1.287 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=25 ttl=64 time=5.517 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=26 ttl=64 time=5.023 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=27 ttl=64 time=3.355 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=28 ttl=64 time=4.042 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=29 ttl=64 time=4.124 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=30 ttl=64 time=4.019 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=31 ttl=64 time=4.932 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=32 ttl=64 time=5.410 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=33 ttl=64 time=5.390 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=34 ttl=64 time=10.219 ms

but even so there are peak times on this router that bugs me there shouldn't be any problem with this ping and playing world of warcraft or even browsing the web.

Hmmm, doesn't look like what I was experiencing... Perhaps it happens to you sporadically? Next time you notice you're lagging out of WoW or having trouble browsing, try doing another ping. I was getting pings greater than 5000ms from just my laptop to the wireless point when I have trouble.

ok so i hoped on wow and sure enough i had about 5k latency.

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_RCjTUBxYfEo/SSX5IM2qaoI/AAAAAAAAAEg/GTaMFkiLNqY/s800/scree n-capture.png


so i did a ping and this is what it showed:
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=17 ttl=64 time=12.629 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=19 ttl=64 time=3.633 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=20 ttl=64 time=4.692 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=64 time=10.139 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=2.214 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=23 ttl=64 time=1.761 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=24 ttl=64 time=3.460 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=25 ttl=64 time=2.605 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=26 ttl=64 time=9.061 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=27 ttl=64 time=2.891 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=28 ttl=64 time=12.945 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=29 ttl=64 time=10.957 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=30 ttl=64 time=3.877 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=31 ttl=64 time=56.137 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=32 ttl=64 time=2.975 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=33 ttl=64 time=10.636 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=35 ttl=64 time=16.690 ms

Well, sort of. I went to the Genius Bar today and found someone helpful. What they actually did, I don't know. They took it to the techies in the back, and after two and a half hours, they called me, and said it was fixed. Said it had to do with my User profile, and so they had created a new User, and reloaded everything back in except my Network settings. This evening I have had to re-install some software programs like Aperture, Photoshop and the chat line. I restored my home file, but the iCal data is gone.
I can now have both my iMac and the MBP run on Airport without the MBP cutting out. Tomorrow I will go to a wifi cafe or someplace to see if it works there, because previously it kept cutting out in that environment.

My late 2008 MBP's wireless is also sucking. Really really badly, I might add. Especially after the update last week, which I don't think had anything to do with wireless. I've had awful problems in my apartment with my Apple machines and wireless, and none of my other wireless devices have had any problems.

I started out with an Airport Express as my router, which was absolutely awful. Combined with the fact that I had DSL, I couldn't stream video or do anything remotely useful aside from browsing which was frequently a chore. If my Xbox 360 was turned on, I couldn't even browse websites, I'd just get timeout errors.

I then decided that since I couldn't even stream video with my DSL connection (which was free) I'd go ahead and pay for Comcast and go with cable. When it first got turned on, everything was fine but if my 360 was in-use, browsing slowed up considerably. Granted more network traffic will slow things up a bit, but nowhere near as much as I've been seeing. I've since switched my cable modem over to a cable jack that was close to my 360, hard-wired that into the router and I could finally browse moderately while my Xbox was on.

Now today, after doing the latest software update, with no other devices connected, I'm getting everything from the signal varying widely, to having the rest of my updates (iTunes 8.02) timeout after 0.5-1.5MB. When plugged-in via ethernet, everything works swimmingly.

Possible solutions that I'll be working on tonight:

- Changing the channel on my router to see if there's just too many neighboring routers on the same channel

- Trying a few of the random fixes I've seen here and on other forums.

If none of this works, I'll be reporting in to AppleCare and starting up a ticket through the official channels. Frustrating though, as up until now my Apple products have "just worked" except when it comes to wireless which has been a nightmare!

Well after playing around with some router settings to no avail, I think I may be onto something.

I couldn't do ANYTHING at all when I got home from work: the MBP would see the network just fine, but give me "timeout" or "invalid password" every time I tried to connect. Finally I took the MBP out into the living room into direct line-of-sight with the router. BAM! Amazingly, it works, but still fairly slowly.

I then set my router up to do mixed mode (up to 300Mbps from 145) and changed the channel from the default one, which appeared to make things speed up quite a bit. Noted that my RSSI (receive signal strength, for those of you who aren't electrical engineers!) was at -30 with direct line-of-sight. For those who don't know how to check this, hold down "option" while clicking on your AirPort status icon and it will give you these statistics.

I started to continue downloading the updates (iTunes 8.02 and Safari) and proceeded to move back to my desk, which is ever-so-slightly out of the line-of-sight to my router. Within a second, my download stopped. I checked the RSSI and it had changed to -49. Now I'm an electrical engineer, but I most certainly don't specialize in antennas, nor do I know what the acceptable RSSI levels are for the MBP's antenna to function correctly, but my troubles certainly seem directly related to line-of-sight.

Now I know that for "best" wireless performance, you should have direct line-of-sight, but this is ridiculous and none of my other devices (yeah, the common phrase in this thread) have any problems connecting or using the internet at blazing-fast speeds.

Antenna the culprit, maybe?

I have been having issues with this as well when I am in the living room and or the bedroom the airport displays full bars but I get no network connection. I have removed passwords on the TC and opted for an open managed network putting the Airport ID's of all my devices (2 MBP, 3 iMacs, 1 TV, 1 Airport Express (b/g), and 1 iPhone) on to TC. This help some what but signal strength doesn't improve or the drop connections is terrible copying a simple file is glacial.

APPLE PLEASE FIX!